ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Florida lawmakers are pressing on with their push to cut property taxes in some form, promising assistance that would both streamline government and alleviate the state’s growing affordability crisis.
According to conversations with government workers, the benefits to homeowners would likely be much smaller than advertised – and in some cases, could result in increased taxes for low-income and working-class families.
Orange County’s internal analysis of the most far-reaching proposal – eliminating all non-school taxes on homesteaded properties – would result in a $443 million shortfall. That’s about 5% of the county’s 2025-2026 budget and includes $101 million alone for the county’s fire department.
Even a more moderate exemption for homeowners over the age of 65 would result in $30 million less for the fire department, which seniors tend to call more often than younger people, the analysis showed.
However, Orange County Tax Collector Scott Randolph said some of the moderate proposals would strike the right compromise. His focus on property taxes is less about the numbers themselves, but on fairness.
“There’s no doubt local government budgets have exploded in the last four to five years,” he said. “If you bought in the last three to four years… you are definitely paying an exorbitant amount of property taxes as compared to your neighbors.”
To demonstrate this, WFTV looked at two houses on Faulkner Street in Winter Garden. The first house was purchased in 2022. The second, similar house has not changed hands since it was built in the 2000s.
The first, recently purchased house paid $5,995.68 in property taxes last year, records showed. The second house paid $1,672.94.
Government staff said one option is to replace property taxes with special assessments. Instead of a tax based on the value of a home, it would tax each home equally.
That could result in a tax increase for low-value homes and a tax break for wealthier homeowners.
Rep. Doug Bankson (R-Apopka), who sits on the property tax committee, said he was in favor of a model like that because each house uses the same services when an emergency happens.
He said they were examining ways to make sure services were paid for without taking money from one pot and putting it into another. He said a large sales tax increase had been ruled out but left a smaller increase on the table.
He also stated he was firmly in support of an off-ramp for property taxes instead of cutting them all at once.
“The homework for each of us was to go and get the data,” he said. “That conversation hasn’t been had on a deeper level.”
Likewise, he said the conversation needed to be had so that renters weren’t hit by higher taxes to make up the shortfall – but he said the relief to first-time homebuyers by the changes would incentivize people to move from rentals into home ownership.
Randolph spoke favorably of one of the proposals: converting the homestead exemption from a flat rate into a percentage of the home’s value.
It would be a $110 million hit Orange County’s budget, but Randolph said the county would be able to absorb it and would still collect more taxes than it did in 2023.
“I think cutting down the budgets and making it more fair so that all voters can feel the impact… then provides more I think accountability to local government,” he said. “The local government can always raise that millage to replace that revenue if they think they need to, and if voters believe that they should.”
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